Comms Dealer

The social sphere is spinning into UC's orbit but how far it will gravitate is open to question.

The social sphere is spinning faster with employees communicating internally and externally of their organisations, and with the social networks available today these communications are multi-channel - people straddling their home and work offices and mixing their business and social comms. The best UC products are integrating into this mix, helping people to work with whoever, wherever they are on whatever platform they choose, according to Rob Keenan (pictured), Head of Portfolio Management, Northern Cluster at Unify.

"UC has been moving into the social sphere for some time," said Keenan. "We've seen UC elements embedded into social networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook albeit in basic chat and messaging forms. The reverse is happening with UC too. New systems are now moving from purely traditional comms methods to more social-based conversations. Unify's Circuit platform is an example of this."

Traditional UC uses point-based communications where click-to-call and scheduled conferences have definitive start and end points. This has been dubbed UCv1. But things have moved on. The focus of UCv2 has shifted to dynamic and persistent conversations between people who not only work in traditional team structures but also teams where people are mobile.

"Such flexibility is akin to a social network - an easy tool that works across any device and can help people work with one another as if they were together in the same room," added Keenan. "Externally, people liaise with others outside of their organisation all the time, yet they still want to work with the same tools they use internally. This is where UCv2 can help by enabling and empowering people to work quickly and easily together, all from one social interface."

Unify is seeing far more interest in this area, driven mostly by Twitter use. Many forward-looking organisations now realise their customers and audience are using Twitter more than they use the telephone, send emails or send traditional mail. A reputation built up over many years can be lost in 24 hours due to the transparency and immediacy of social media. But it can also be used as a positive tool.

"Every organisation should be embracing social," added Keenan. "Not using it to its full potential is a trick missed. Resellers should assess how social media could affect a client's customers: Are they using it to communicate with them already? What's the balance between social, email, telephone and chat? Many organisations have an employee dedicated to social media, but their domain is often outside of the contact centre. By integrating the two an organisation can respond, market and help their customers far more quickly, easily, and often more cheaply than traditional voice options."

Social media integration not only creates big opportunities for companies it also brings new challenges, pointed out Giuseppe Fragale, Head of Microsoft UC Technologies and Services at SIPHON. "Business goals such as improving the quality of customer care or augmenting collaborative culture are certainly to be applauded," he said. "However, resellers must be aware that these desirable outcomes cannot be achieved solely with technology.

"We are talking about the way people work day-to-day, about how employees interact with one another internally as well as with their suppliers and customers, so the best solution can only be achieved by placing a strong emphasis on the user experience. In turn, this can only be done effectively by investigating and then making appropriate modifications to all the relevant processes in the company's value chain."

On the question of whether UC is heading social, Giuseppe is less certain. "It's doubtful whether this is actually the case," he mused. "In fact, the opposite may be true. These two paradigms, UC and social, have different customer segments. The social paradigm has given rise to new customer needs. Some of these needs are addressed by ordinary UC services. By comparison, UC applications have a different scope and serve different customer requirements.

"While some social applications such as Facebook are working to incorporate voice within the existing services offered to customers, it's worth noting that social companies are considering doing this with single standalone UC services, rather than the entire UC service-suite."

Giuseppe cited examples of such developments. WhatsApp started out as a simple IM chat and file transfer application. In late 2013, the former start-up added its voice-as-a-message feature which allowed voice messages to be recorded and sent peer-to-peer. In February it was reported that WhatsApp had begun beta testing Internet calls with some users. It's no coincidence that WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, Giuseppe pointed out.

"Viber began as a free VoIP call application and has since added some advanced IM features that are more typical of an innovative UC offering such as Lync 2013/Skype," he added. "Now, Microsoft is attempting to integrate a social application platform (Yammer) with a UC platform (Lync/Office 365), a collaboration platform (sharepoint/Office365) and a messaging platform (Exchange/Office365)."

SIPHON's approach takes into account the processes as well as the technologies being used. "By giving consideration to both, SIPHON can support resellers to find the optimal way of achieving UC integration with social platforms," added Giuseppe.

In the main, UC systems are alive with real-time communications and are therefore a natural fit for real-time social interactions, according to Darren Standing, Head of Products and Marketing at Solar Communications. "Social media integration in UC and contact centre deployments provides another channel to engage with customers in a forum that suits them," he said. "Integration of social channels into UC systems becomes vital for shifting between channels easily and seamlessly. It allows you to respond appropriately to particular issues, even if it involves moving the conversation to a different channel such as a voice call. However, for resellers the maturity of a customer's social media engagement is key. Bringing social into a UC environment when a customer's social media strategy is not mature is likely to result in difficult UC deployments."

It is also important for customer-facing departments to adopt social channels to meet customer demand and respond quickly to issues, pointed out Standing. "Social media is a valuable knowledge base for customer service, marketing and other customer-focused departments, and early notification on twitter of customer dissatisfaction needs to be delivered to the appropriate resources within a business. They won't want to use separate systems to do this."

The use of social internally is prevalent so organisations are wanting to set up UC with more than just video and voice. "Whether that's using Salesforce Chatter, uploading photos from smartphones or Instant Messenger, social is becoming an integral part of the communication structure," said Spencer Bradshaw, Head of Solution Architect Practice, EMEA, ShoreTel. "Increasingly, we're also seeing businesses wishing to extend their collaboration tools used inside of the organisation to other businesses, or indeed the buying public in a B2C world."

Deploying social UC tools 'for the sake of it' isn't the answer. Resellers need to review the business requirements. They also need to understand their customers' customer. "It comes down to the expectation of the end customer," added Bradshaw. "If an organisation is trying to attract and engage with a younger audience, social could make more sense for customer care. However, this has to be part of the overall business strategy and not just a bolt-on solution. Once you've looked at social and how it is aligned to customer needs as well as your business strategy, you also have to commit 100 per cent."

Sometimes the hardest part is for businesses to accept the fact that there are aspects of social media platforms they cannot control. "It's a different ball game for customer care here," noted Bradshaw. "Our aim is to help resellers and their customers understand the implications of social and what businesses are trying to achieve. Looking forward to the launch of our new platforms at our Partner Conference in April, we will introduce a fresh approach to many aspects of UC and contact centre."

Any company must have a professional interest in gaining and keeping customers, but the best have an interest in upholding customer care at their heart. Koris is a shining example of such an organisation, according to Sales and Marketing Director Craig McCalley.

It is instinctive for Koris to put customers front and centre - no matter what - a policy that is paying off in bucket loads, according to McCalley. Little of this comes as a surprise to scholars of customer care, but the Koris philosophy adds a new dimension to client satisfaction and retention, and the statistics speak for themselves in loud volume. The company hasn't lost a customer to a service issue for over eight years, and there is unlikely to be the tiniest deviation from this established formula.

In 2007 four directors and the senior team of an acquired company set up Koris, a fresh business with a sharp focus on its 'serviceFirst' ethos. "From the outset Koris has been passionate about customer experience," said McCalley. "There have been no sharp turning points in our development, more a continuous elevation of service that revolves around customer retention, growth of customers, revenue, profit and the development of dedicated, valued staff. Just saying you have good customer service is not good enough."

So true. Small wonder Koris' turnover of over £4 million generates profitable year-on-year growth of 28-47 per cent. Its circa 30 headcount services a customer base of 200 user companies and global organisations with thousands of employees. "Our business will continue its profitable growth at the current rate reaching £10 million turnover in the next three-five years," added McCalley.

Underpinning this growth is the firm's much praised ServiceFirst approach, enabling it to build a strong maintenance and managed service base that is responsive, proactive and takes ownership of all issues. "Organisations no longer need to tolerate poor service," added McCalley. "Customers are also far more educated about their requirements so we ensure that all staff from sales through to engineering provide added value."

We all understand that offering an outstanding customer experience leads to profitable growth, but only with the right employees on board. "Our biggest challenge is the time it takes to find the right staff," added McCalley. "We want people who are not just capable but also have the right outlook. Finding engineers with our passionate ServiceFirst desire can be tricky. It is easy to find qualified and experienced engineers but more difficult to find them with the right customer service attitude, mainly because of the way they have been previously managed and targeted."

Upholding the ServiceFirst ethos is Koris' primary occupation but sticking to core values and 'what we are good at' is an equally important modus operandi. Not for nothing did Koris scoop a brace of important BT Business Partner Sales awards - Growth Partner of the Year 2014 and Acquisition Partner of The Year 12 months earlier.

"Koris made a strategic decision to partner with a core group of key vendors enabling us to ensure we have the highest level of skill, technical expertise and experience," said McCalley. "We are a voice and data managed service provider, so we focus on providing solutions that enable customers to increase their revenues and reduce costs. Koris reduces and manages risk for multi-site organisations that may also have disparate or remote workforces."

In terms of LAN and WAN the company partners with Cisco for hardware and BT for circuits. Mitel is the preferred option for addressing opportunities in IP telephony and contact centres, an eight year partnership that delivers over 35 per cent growth year-on-year. "Koris' early investment in Lync catalysed our fastest area of growth, in particular high availability voice and integration into legacy systems," commented McCalley. "So much so that many partners outsource this element to us due to the complexity of the solution. This investment has given us not only the platform but also the experience that our competitors find difficult to compete against."

There is more to Koris' knack for achieving notable successes: McCalley's experience is the ultimate sign of a Director whose clarity of vision defines his leadership approach. McCalley's 20 years experience in the IT and telco industry began at a comms distributor in telesales. He moved to a small start-up and progressed from internal sales to Sales Director achieving £18 million turnover. This business was later acquired by Azzurri.

"I have been lucky to work with some great people in start-up, VC backed, AIM listed and LSE global organisations," commented McCalley. "This gave me a deep understanding of business types and their different situations, including M&A, start-up, turnaround and growth. My current role will continue to focus on developing our successful sales team while ensuring ongoing customer satisfaction and profitable growth."

Ask any reseller what determines success and he or she will reply that it comes from true business partnerships, not from product alone or price driven sales, according to Steve Harrington, Sales Director at tIPicall.

What matters most is partnerships and leadership, along with seeing the way ahead with both eyes fixed on growth, product and partner development. The idea of prioritising price as a telling factor between good or bad partnerships is implausible, especially in the vibrant SIP market where tIPicall is achieving great gains, a point Harrington is keen to underline. "Within 12 months we want to be recognised as the SIP and hosted supplier of choice for international services in the UK," stated Harrington. "Within five years we intend to be in the full-time top three SIP suppliers overall in the UK."

Over the last 12 months Harrington has witnessed significant changes in many areas of the SIP and hosted market. And one of the biggest growth areas for tIPicall has been international numbers. "We have sold thousands of new numbers from all over the world, from Nicaraguan 0800 numbers to US landline numbers," he explained. "The take-up has even surprised us and we are excited about the growth of this part of the market. The international SIP product set will be our key driver and differentiator for the next 12 months at least. We are engaging with partners who have a real client need for these services, and we are providing training and sales support so they can get to grips with how it works and the key benefits."

Harrington has been in the business for long enough to allow insightful market assessments and sound strategic judgements. "There are two main trends showing up in the market," he said. "The first is the additional value add services on SIP trunks, the other is the globalisation of SIP itself. In terms of adding value we have improved and introduced new functions and services to our proposition. For example, we partnered with Juniper Bridge for out-of-hours support, offering free 24/7/365 support to all of our customers. We also added a Disaster Recovery product set to SIP that is free. We can now automate inbound failover calls to other IP addresses or numbers and automatically move them back once service is restored."

Another big development is the globalisation of SIP. Traditionally only the global carriers have been able to offer truly multi-national telephony-based services spanning different continents. "However, the mass adoption of SIP and our particular carrier set-up has enabled us to develop a rival product," added Harrington. "The ability to provide local breakout SIP in 14 countries will drastically change our business. Our specific abilities in this area have allowed us to engage with large resellers who use us for traditional UK-based SIP trunks and hosted PBX services. Presenting international numbers on outbound calls seems to be hitting the spot."

Currently, 80 per cent of tIPicall's business is UK-based but Harrington predicts that by the end of the year at least 40 per cent of revenues will come from international customers with a multi-national presence. "Presently this service is available in Europe and the US, but we are already planning Far East expansion and Australia later in the year, and maybe even Brazil," he added. "This is truly exciting for our resellers who can finally play on the same stage as the big international players."

tIPicall's capabilities have come on by leaps and bounds which is a sign of its attraction for larger resellers as the company's name in the market has grown. "Comms Vision was significant for us and we have already engaged with several key partners because of that event," explained Harrington. "It is becoming increasingly apparent that large resellers are looking for more than one supplier for every product set, and as SIP has grown the dominant players no longer have a free ride as the only choice."

tIPicall is always on the lookout for financially stable partners who want to sell its services, but it rejects more partners than it takes on. The strategy is to look towards larger resellers where the company can often add the most value. That said, tIPicall's dealer base is expected to grow this year with many IT companies entering the SIP and hosted space.

"Some of our partners have their own networks and just want to send us calls and get numbers," commented Harrington. "This is a big growth area and as the larger traditional resellers are looking to set up their own SIP infrastructures we can help them with carrier services. But many partners still need a hands-on approach to the installation and management of SIP and hosted services. We have to be flexible enough to cope with individual demands as every partner is different."

Nurturing higher growth levels from within the existing partner base is down to efficient processes and tIPicall's new portal. "We fully believe that we can double the business with only two more staff," said Harrington. "We are all about being efficient and process driven. Our new ordering and trunk management portal will assist greatly with this and our resellers welcome the hands-off approach. They will still need us for account management and second line support, but normal day-to-day activities should be web-based and not human-based."

It could rightly be argued that toll fraud remains an issue without a comprehensive industry-wide policy, but the bullet has to be bitten and developments around fraud also feature prominently in tIPicall's itinerary as it seeks to lock horns with this anathema. "We have seen the market play catch-up to this very real threat," said Harrington. "Hourly, daily, weekly and monthly alerts and cut-offs based on spend are part of what we now provide as standard. Integration with the telecoms fraud database is also a new option where known numbers and IP addresses can automatically be banned. The fight against fraud never ends and we know all the serious players in the industry are working together to help minimise the risk for everyone concerned. We are very much part of this and our Managing Director, Guy Miller, is on the ITSPA board."

tIPicall also plunged into what has become an obsession for channel education and training. No one can argue against the value it places on market education nor quarrel with measures to combat bad practices. Rallying to the cause Harrington said: "Education is key. There are still many organisations that sell SIP purely on price. This must change if they are to survive and grow. It is our role to help them understand best practice.

"Basic SIP training is not so important as the market is maturing. However, the intricacies of what SIP can bring and the new value added services means that a new level of training is required. Our World SIP and international numbering products require training from a sales, operational and technical point of view and we will keep this up until all of our partners are comfortable. If they don't understand the product they won't sell or support it properly and everyone loses. Our training is effective and we still have people coming back to us months or years later wanting to engage because they were at one of our training sessions. Training allows us to understand who our partners are and what they need from us."

Philip Carse, Analyst at Megabuyte.com, reports on the recent performance of leading companies in the comms space during the last quarter.

The UK Telecoms and Networks peer group has risen in share price terms by 7.2% over the last quarter, ahead of the 4.0% rise of the FTSE over the same period, but under-performing the Megabuyte Taylor Wessing (MBTW) 11.6% rise. Key share price performers include BT, off the back of its EE deal, and Gamma, off solid trading. Hot topics this quarter, aside from Quad Play manoeuvring by the big consumer players include hosted unified comms growth and two M&A deals for Daisy.

BT received a warm welcome for its M&A initiatives with the shares rising 17% over three months as it confirmed a £12.5bn bid for EE and raised £1bn in new equity. Sky and TalkTalk also enjoyed a good three month share performance (+10% and +8%) but the shares have under-performed over the last month, with TalkTalk talking down full year EBITDA and Sky paying 68% more per game for Premier League football (versus 18% for BT).

The best share price performers over the last year have come from the business comms community, led by Gamma's 37% rise since the October 2014 IPO, Redcentric (+31%), Adept Telecom (+24%), COLT (+17%) and Maintel (+18%). The worst share price performers have been business comms firms Coms plc and Pinnacle, down 76% and 43% respectively. Gamma issued a strong trading update, leading the company's broker to forecast £172m revenue and £22.9m EBITDA for 2014, giving growth rates of 16% and 33% respectively. The company has secured market leading growth from new services as well as growing its reseller base. CEO Bob Falconer told us, for example, that SIP trunks grew 45% and hosted voice (Cloud PBX) by 86% during 2014.

The strong growth in hosted voice is also demonstrated in results from two US-listed UCaaS pioneers, 8x8 and RingCentral. 8x8 grew revenues 26% to $41.4m and professed itself 'thrilled' with the performance of its UK subsidiary (the ex-Voicenet); while RingCentral grew 36% to $62m though, in contrast to 8x8, is still unprofitable and cash consuming. The growth in hosted Unified Comms was a key driver behind Living Bridge's recent investment in IP Solutions.

Accounts for the year to March 2014 from another Living Bridge investment - wireless ISP Metronet - confirm the very strong performance highlighted to us at the June 2014 SBO, with revenues up 49% organically to £11.6m, EBITDA up 30% and positive FCF. Contact centre and unified comms specialist Sabio delivered another year of double-digit revenue growth of 23% to £34.4m and EBITDA increased more than fourfold to £2.2m.

Three of the major players in the smaller end of the business market recently released somewhat contrasting results. Vitruvian-backed Universal Utilities/Unicom reported revenues up 3.1% to £69.1m, with the usual exemplary cash flow. The move to IFRS boosted already industry-leading EBITDA margins by a fifth, to 40%, though with a compensating increase in capex.

XLN reported a 2.1% dip in revenues to £63.8m, but EBITDA margin expansion. The company characterised the period as one of lower spending on sales and marketing, which both depressed revenues and boosted EBITDA. Chess grew revenues and EBITDA 10-11% to £48.8m and £12.2m respectively, while last June's Avenir acquisition will take revenues to over £70m in the current year.

Daisy reported that half year EBITDA fell 7.1% to £25.8m on revenues down 2.5% at £169.6m, while Azzurri reported revenues down 5.9% at £104.5m and collapsing EBITDA margins, with cash flow also impacted by yet more exceptional costs. However, the worst may be over for Azzurri following two balance sheet restructurings.

Contact centre and hosted voice provider Callstream Group (formerly Bluebell Telecom) reported revenues down 10% to £11.9m and slight margin declines, though we estimate a flat underlying performance factoring in the August 2013 sale of 3,000 customers to Adept Telecom. Accounts to March 2014 for low cost broadband provider New Call Telecom, which operates the Primus brand, showed the impact of investment by Jerome Booth in July 2013, with revenues growing 21% to £19.0m with substantial EBITDA losses. The company has also been busy on the M&A front, with an emerging markets focus, buying 75% of messaging provider Nimbuzz and 100% of wholesale voice carrier Wavecrest, though some of the reported deal valuations seems rather high to us.

The main M&A event of the last quarter was BT confirming its planned £12.5bn acquisition of EE, followed by a £1bn fund raise to help finance the deal. Away from BT, there were two deals apiece for Daisy and TalkTalk, including one between the two involving the sale of some of TalkTalk's off-net base to Daisy for an undisclosed amount. Meanwhile, TalkTalk also acquired Tesco's OTT video service Blinkbox.

Newly private Daisy also acquired the UK business of Damovo, a provider of a full range of IT services to 250 public and private sector organisations in the UK. Damovo adds about £1.5m, or 3% to Daisy EBITDA. Damovo's non-UK/European business was acquired by ex-Daisy shareholder Oakley Capital, with Daisy CEO Matt Riley becoming Executive Chairman of the business to lead a roll up.

IS Research publishes www.megabuyte.com, a company analysis and intelligence service covering over 200 public and private UK technology companies. philip.carse@megabuyte.com

Daisy Group's incoming CEO, Neil Muller, has revealed plans to take the company on the next step in its journey towards national supremacy, and he has shown himself as a determined figure.

The Daisy growth campaign is now in full cry. Muller's inspired appointment is likely, over time, to prove a historic moment for the Group - but can Daisy really seize the opportunity to be the premier ICT supplier for SMEs? A positive outcome is inevitable, says Muller unequivocally, and his growth plan is meticulously reasoned. Prior to joining Daisy he spent 21 years running Computacenter's UK business in the enterprise market as Managing Director. Former Daisy Group CEO Matt Riley (now Executive Chairman, who founded the firm in 2001 and grew its turnover to £350-plus million) said Muller's appointment is 'vital' for developing Daisy's growth in the ICT space, especially its managed services portfolio and the mid-market in particular.

This sense of coherent ambition between Muller and Riley typifies Daisy on the brink of its next growth challenge. "I was drawn by Matt's clear focus and ambition to be the communications and IT services partner of choice in the UK's small and mid-market arena," commented Muller. "Having helped steer Computacenter within the enterprise space to become a key services partner for customers, vendors and BPO players, I am absolutely confident that Daisy can also become a key partner within the ever-growing world of ecosystems."

Muller departed Computacenter with a 'heavy heart' eased by immense pride in his work at the firm having led significant growth and achieving success in building a sustainable services business. But after 21 years it was time for a new challenge and Daisy offered a rare opportunity that Muller describes as 'immense'. "My attentions and excitement now turn to working with the Daisy family," he commented. "Daisy has experienced tremendous growth throughout its history, but now we embark on the next phase of the journey. Two focus areas are to leverage the scale of the Daisy Group and enhance its capability, ensuring that our solutions remain competitive and relevant with a service quality delivered through customer-centricity. "

Even in its formative years Daisy was no advertisement for small is beautiful, such is the size of Riley's ambition. Fittingly, Muller's appointment is a desirable match. He also thinks big and plans to build on Group scale, develop and implement required standards and systems, drive operational effectiveness and efficiency, protect and serve existing business through tip-top customer satisfaction and focus on empowering fully engaged and enabled employees.

"Business doesn't need to be complicated," added Muller. "In fact, the simpler you can make it, more often than not the better the results. My near-term aim is to outline a simple growth plan that provides all employees with a sense of clarity, belonging and purpose. The plan will focus on our strategy, growth priorities and our execution. Employee engagement and enablement delivers high levels of customer satisfaction which in turn drives business results. So it is my mission to deliver the best experience possible for customers and our staff. We will look to simplify the complex and focus on the benefits and the business outcomes that technology enables."

Muller is also preparing the ground for closer channel partnerships characterised by a collaborative approach that will generate greater rewards. "I would like us to rethink the way in which we engage around certain types of partner opportunities," he explained. "We have an amazing opportunity to create stronger partnerships and ecosystems by working side-by-side and more proactively with our partners, enabling them to deliver more complete solutions to their customers.

"First and foremost, we will preserve and enhance the trust that existing partners have in Daisy today. I want Daisy to be the easiest and most fulfilling company to do business with. We will continue to listen closely to our partners, always focusing on building partner advocacy and continually evolving our systems and processes accordingly. I want to ensure that we fully extend our scale, reach and product range to our partners."

Daisy's inherent strengths go hand in hand with Riley's deep desire for the business to evolve and change with the times. This combination caught Muller's eye and was a factor that attracted him to the CEO role. "Five years ago, over 80 per cent of Daisy's revenues were around voice services, now a declining market as consumers and businesses shift to mobile, IP, over the top services and alternative methods of communication," commented Muller. "Under Matt's leadership Daisy has diversified away from voice which today represents less than 40 per cent of group revenues."

The story of Daisy's recent history, during its five years as a Plc, is one of impressive growth and value creation. From 2009 to 2014 revenues and EBITDA grew on average by 27 per cent and 52 per cent year-on-year. Investors in Daisy's shares in 2009 would have seen a return of 150 per cent over the period. "We are in a great market at a great time," said Muller. "CEOs are starting to see investment in technology as an enabler for differentiation and delivering growth. I am therefore confident that by sticking to the basics of running a great business, putting our customers and employees first and leading a great team we can achieve our growth aims. And let's keep our fingers crossed that macro-economic factors continue to deliver a stable backdrop for business growth."

According to Muller, SMEs need unprecedented help in managing the complexity of technology, widening the scope for Daisy to embark on an exciting new era of consultancy augmented by complementary aids to growth. "Daisy has real brand strength as a champion for this sector in traditional telecoms products," Muller added. "What is less well known is that we already have significant strengths outside of telecoms - in hosting, cloud and IT services. I see a natural convergence of these areas crystallised for our customers in simple-to-buy and easy-to-consume managed services. In three years time, I am confident that we will see Daisy as a strong, recognised player in communications and IT managed services for the UK small and mid-market, leveraging our strong heritage in fixed and mobile connectivity."

Nothing separates a business from realising its goals more than a lack of company culture, believes Muller, who espouses a common vision for organisational values and behaviours. "The culture of an organisation is paramount," he stated. "I will be looking to build on the excellent culture of today through a single sense of purpose, belonging and pride in everything that we do. A high performing culture will help us deliver high performing results, which in turn will create opportunities for employees and our partners. And against a digital backdrop, I see a tremendous opportunity to deliver more value to our customers by offering faster, more secure and reliable voice, mobile and data connectivity and a range of connected value added and managed services."

Influencing future growth requires a solid set of skills that demonstrate relevant value and differentiation, and get results. "To stay relevant to our customers we need to strengthen and evolve our customer relationships, from an internally-focused 'sell to' business support model towards a much closer, horizontal and proactive 'sell with' partnership, helping our customers to add value to their end users and stakeholders," stated Muller. "We will focus on strengthening our customer relationships, while aligning our portfolio strategy to the digital business demands of the market."

By Elvire Gosnold, Director, Blabbermouth Marketing: I want a modern, professional, clean website. This is what many of our clients want in their new website but everyone has a different opinion of what is modern and attractive.

Trends at the moment are parallaxing, white space and full site scrolling on one page. You should ask yourself if these features fit in with your existing corporate image, or the one that you wish to portray in the future.

What will you actually use the site for and who will be visiting the site? Websites are often the first point of contact your prospects have with you and are therefore one of the most important mechanisms for future growth, but you need to think deeper about what you want your website to achieve. This in turn will help you put together a good brief to the web developer to give them enough information for an honest quotation.

How much functionality do you really need? Bells and whistles look great but it all costs money. Yes it is extra work to add on an e-commerce facility and yes a customer portal will cost more so think carefully about what your company really needs to succeed. Plan from the start and remain focused on your core objectives. Think about what your visitors will actually use the site for. One page scrolling websites can look edgy but if you are using the website to run through your portfolio of products the whole thing is at risk of looking confusing.

I advise clients to collect links for websites they like as they go about their daily lives. This way they build up a repository of real examples to show a developer their vision of a new website. Remember, we all have a different opinion on what is modern and attractive.

Simwood has ‘grown-up' says Managing Director Simon Woodhead who lets us know what the company stands for as a channel champion in the making.

For Woodhead to put the channel top of the agenda is a sure-fire winner. Rarely has an evolving channel strategy been so wrapped in determination, and on the topic of future developments and Simwood's role in the channel he is emphatically to the point. "Restructure, acquisition, and all that goes with it including rebranding and integration," he stated. "We're 18 this year so it's time to grow up and jump-start our channel proposition."

As of 2014 Simwood came under a new planning regime. Its purpose is simple - to restructure as Simwood Group PLC, focus on the channel, go big on mobile, and just as big on product diversity, innovation and growth. This, believes Woodhead, will release the company's full potential. "We are developing channel focused functions and processes and will be making acquisitions to accelerate that strategy," he said. "We own our platform and supply chain and will extend that tangibility down into an authentic but innovative channel offering. Watch this space."

The first acquisition will give the company a platform to offer hosted telephony to the channel and an outlet for other products currently offered only through wholesale. Referring to the upcoming mobile component Woodhead says nothing like it has been seen before. "Mobile is a big focus for us and we will launch in a few months," he commented. "We have control of our own mobile core and have moved Business Logic to our own stack. That means we can offer wholesale customers and the channel mobile in a way that has not been done before."

How? By divorcing the handset from the number and the network to enable true convergence. "We, and in turn our customers, control the entire experience," added Woodhead. "Customers can have mobiles without numbers as PBX extensions, multiple mobile numbers routing to the same handset, or one mobile number to many handsets - to give just a few examples. They can also inject premium functionality such as call recording into the call flow because we give them total control."

Resellers will respond enthusiastically to clear leadership from their suppliers and if they are given what they want all the better. Woodhead knows what they want: "It is critical for us and key for the market that everyone adds value," he commented. "Value add propositions in mobile are virtually impossible for anyone other than the big MNOs. With us resellers become MVNOs in a couple of API calls without the nonsense and expense they'd face trying to do it through other routes. This is big and exciting."

Woodhead's future outlook on mobile contrasts with his view on fixed-mobile convergence which he considers to be in the same place as fixed-line pre-deregulation. "It's not enough to be able to bill somebody's mobile use along with their fixed line," he stated. "End users want integration and our new platform is a big step towards that. Yet the market remains protected not least by Ofcom which makes it almost impossible to innovate in the mobile space by withholding the necessary numbering resources."

Rather than tear up long-held plans around wholesale, Woodhead has marked out room for strategic manoeuvre. This, he says, is an evolution of the business that brings great potential. "Our wholesale business is growing exponentially but it will be circa 10 per cent of the whole in five years time," he explained. "That 10 per cent will be massively bigger than it is today assuming we get that far independently. We've had two approaches to sell in the last six months and I expect more when our mobile product is out there. We're absolutely not looking to exit, but if we could put our team and network behind a bigger sales function we'd be mad not to."

Simwood's stock-in-trade customers to date are by definition technical - ISPs and network operators wanting to add voice to their portfolio, and other specialist operators such over-the-top app developers. The firm's biggest account is BT, but among other customers Simwood counts two MNOs, the world's largest fax-to-email provider and circa 660 other communications providers of all sizes. "We supply a best-of-breed product to a niche of customers who themselves are operating in a niche," added Woodhead. "Our customers can build a SIP stack from scratch but in many cases won't have heard of WLR nor see the relevance of it. They, and us, are already in the future and we need to deliver some of that innovation to the channel. In our opinion the channel is starved of innovation."

Woodhead's decision to bring innovation into the mainstream of the market by reaching out to the channel may rank as the company's smartest move, but its solid foundations cannot be ignored. "We've always made a profit and our wholly owned architecture has been almost entirely self-funded to the extent we're virtually debt free and I still own most of the business," he noted.

"In revenue terms 2015 will see us top £2.5 million. That's small for this industry but it is important to appreciate we're purely wholesale at present so considering margins for our wholesale customer and their channel partners, that translates into end user billings of circa £40 million. The most interesting year for us will be 2016 when we see mobile gain traction."

The industry seems gripped by fixed-mobile convergence as a category similar to nirvana, but it is more than solely billing fixed, mobile and connectivity on one bill, reaffirmed Woodhead. "It should be about making them work together," he commented. "For example, if customers had true voice mobility with their office extension on their mobile, their home number in the car, their on-call pager to their house, and billing extended to family bundles that over time make the Internet of Things a commercial reality, then we'd really be in an exciting place. There are technical solutions out there, but arguably they're far from production ready and not in the channel in a palatable form. So we built a reliable solution that will be available to the channel."

Rewind the clock and Woodhead's interest in technology first showed itself while at primary school, but the headmaster made a miscalculation of titanic proportions when he judged that Woodhead lacked the aptitude for such a pursuit. He has remained disrespectful of authority ever since, with a no-nonsense irreverent vigour that keeps the likes of Ofcom in his sights.

Woodhead's uncle came to the rescue. He too was a teacher with access to computers and tutored the budding technology entrepreneur at weekends. Woodhead also grew up in a commercial environment, his parents being industrial launderers. This experience instilled a strong work ethic and gave him a firm grasp on book keeping while still a teenager.

"I shunned university but managed to get into the graduate selection for a wealth management company that is now part of Deutsche Bank," recalled Woodhead. "I came top in the aptitude tests so they took me on as a graduate trainee anyway. I managed £40 million by the age of 21, but IT kept finding me. The big legacy systems and network fascinated me so I was pulled away from fund management into technological roles."

In the mid-90s Simwood's Chairman Grahame Davies co-founded Demon Internet and made the Internet accessible to all, including Woodhead. By then he'd been headhunted by a company that later became known as Barclays Wealth. "I was interested in the convergence of Internet and mobile and developed eSMS, which at the time was the world's first global gateway between the two," said Woodhead. "We pioneered bulk SMS delivery but our main product was two-way email to mobile phones using SMS as the transport. We also enabled SMS between networks."

Woodhead quit his finance job to concentrate on Simwood and other start-ups. "I refocused the business on VoIP in 2005 and Simwood as you see it today was born," he commented. "We spent five years replacing our supply chain to own our own national IP network and SS7 voice interconnects. Joining the London Internet Exchange was a key milestone, not because it was any technical or commercial achievement but because it took us, me especially, out of our petri dish into a world of people like us."

With the sublime concentration of a scientist Woodhead has redrawn Simwood's strategic lines in favour of a pledge to ‘be more channel friendly', but the company's pedigree will be strongly felt for some time to come. "We're an interface between old and new telephony," he added. "We provide UK numbering and termination, all orchestrated through an innovative API. Our USP is complete vertical ownership from the IP network to the VoIP stack and the entire business process in between. We resell nothing and have complete control and agility.

"We didn't retrofit IP and VoIP to a legacy network. We had them so our integration has been backwards, adding more and more legacy capability behind contemporary architecture as we climbed the food chain and needed them. We've done things differently to maximise uptime, flexibility and economics for our customers. Our platform scales and is already handling 300,000 operations per second."

Woodhead's blogs (http://blog.simwood.com) enjoy extraordinary intellectual sway and, for example, he speaks on VoIP fraud around the world citing his research and making data available to all. "We have hundreds of checks and limits that are applied for every call, and that customers can apply to individual trunks," he said. "Crucially, they're all real-time. A customer can use our API or portal to see the calls in progress on their account right now. Should a customer fall victim - and generally those who apply the controls we offer tend not to - then all of these mitigate and contain an attack. We provide real-time alerts by SMS and masses of features network side. That is the authentic thing to do."

The industry will learn nothing by ignoring visionary tacticians such as Woodhead. His insights provide a signpost to the future and, like his viewpoints, defy all challenges, especially when striking a blow for equality. "We're open with our thinking and view of the world," he said. "We've been vocal on some of the backward steps the industry has taken, such as the Narrowband Review, a punch that us and other non-incumbents have had to take. Our ethos is about getting the best technology and innovation into the hands of end users through a fair and transparent market, neither of which we have."

Government plans to crack down on nuisance callers do not go far enough according to Simwood's MD Simon Woodhead (pictured).

"We made suggestions to the Department of Culture Media and Sport about making the process of Nuisance Call Handling fit for purpose," he said. "While we welcome the changes they fail to acknowledge the points we made and exacerbate the factors behind them."

The Government could enforce mandatory Caller ID (CLI) for marketing callers, observed Woodhead. "While welcome, it is common practice for marketing callers to already present CLI because it improves answer rates and bypasses basic Anonymous Caller Reject services," he pointed out.

"The problem is that the CLI they use isn't necessarily their own. Enforcing them to use one risks more calls bypassing Anonymous Caller Reject services, and more complaints into a broken complaints process.

"Furthermore, whether CLI is withheld from the callee or not, a call compliant with existing OFCOM requirements will have a valid CLI visible to operators at a lower level anyway.

"They simply need to look more deeply into where the problem call actually entered their network, rather than which operator's number was used.

"For example, BT call handlers just rely on the range holder to
attribute blame, irrespective of where the call actually came from or
whether the range holder had any connection with it. "

Woodhead has called on OFCOM and the DCMS to reform the Nuisance Call process within the incumbent and other major operators to avoid this scenario.

"We have a zero tolerance for Nuisance Calling," he stated. "In addition to Intelligent Caller Reject to help our customers' end users, we also expect the use of valid and well formed CLI."

Read Simon Woodhead's full blog here >>

Scania (Great Britain), the supplier of trucks, buses, coaches and engines for industrial and marine applications, has awarded Olive Communications a multi-million pound contract to help it transform its communications estate.

Olive will implement and manage a new cloud-based unified communication solution for 1,000 employees across 50 sites, roll out a new contact centre, implement a new MPLS network and LAN infrastructure, and take over the management of Scania's 600-plus user mobile phone estate.

Richard Gray, Finance and Rental Director for Scania, said: "With our current system coming to the end of its natural life we wanted to procure the best possible solution for our business.

"Our objectives were to improve our ability to provide a first class service to our customers, enhance employee to employee communications, and reduce our infrastructure and telecoms costs across the board."

Martin Flick, CEO, Olive Communications, said: "Bringing together cloud and mobile connectivity under one managed service is an increasingly popular deployment for Olive customers. It increases the ability for employees to contact each other wherever they are working, improving productivity."

"Olive will bring together previously disparately managed and billed elements of Scania's communications estate into one managed service.

"This means that Scania will not only will benefit from significant operational efficiencies, but will significantly reduce its infrastructure costs in the coming years, delivering a substantial return on investment."

Violin Memory has signed up with distributor Arrow for EMEA.

The firm had plans bubbling for a strategic change for two years and during the period saw its share price languish after an IPO in 2013.

Meanwhile all-flash storage gained market share as costs came down. Violin hopes a new range of products due next month will help boost its fortunes.

Violin will be leveraging Arrow's sales, support and technical resources to grow into the all-flash array market in EMEA as enterprise flash storage adoption increases.

Arrow recently joined Violin's Global Channel Program to help the channel deliver sales and take advantage of Violin resources, training and marketing benefits.

Jesper Trolle, vice president sales, marketing and services, Arrow ECS EMEA, said: "It's a crowded market, which means product differentiation and profit potential are key to winning the hearts of the channel.

"Violin has delivered a solution for our customers - a differentiated solution and a new channel program that promotes profitability and sustained growth."